I am often asked by other designers and creatives how I have created and implemented systems and processes in my business and how I was able to hire someone to help me in this area. So, I sat down with Brooke Staub to answer your questions! Brooke is a Virtual Office Manager for entrepreneurs and the owner of Staub Virtual Solutions, LLC; she is also the Artist and Designer at Reflections Fine Art and Design Studio (coming soon). In our chat, we discuss how we as entrepreneurs can build systems and processes into our businesses and how to make them work with a team. I am so excited to share this chat with all of you and hope that it will help you streamline the systems you use within your business. Check out the video below to listen in as we discuss how you can create systems that work for you and your business, how you can grow your team, and how you can find someone to help you design internally even if they aren’t a designer.

WHO YOU ARE, WHAT YOU DO, AND HOW YOU END UP WORKING IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRY?

Brooke: I help Katie internally at QK and do all the things Katie doesn’t have time to do or doesn’t enjoy doing (list below)! I found myself in the industry once I started my own freelancing business as a Virtual Assistant. When I had my first son, I knew I wanted to work from home so that I could be present with my children, be the one to raise them, and not miss all of the precious little moments of their childhood. As my business and my knowledge of the industry grew, I transitioned from offering virtual assistance to providing virtual office management and really focusing on how to implement good and scalable systems.

I have loved art and creativity since I was a child and it is a gene that has been passed down from both sides of my family. I was homeschooled through 10th grade and was self-taught in art up until that point. I had a wonderful art teacher at public school for 2 years and very talented art professors in college who helped me further develop my skills in drawing and painting. When I started my virtual business, I learned how to use Canva and then applied my artistic abilities and creativity virtually so that I could help others design internally within their businesses.

WHAT brooke handles at queenikathleeni:

• Managing/creating systems internally + client-facing

• Asana Management + Reminders

• Dropbox Maintenance/organization (adding new client folders)

• Honeybook:

  • Maintenance

  • Workflows

  • Client Communication/onboarding/offboarding

• Internal Design for QK

  • Social Media templates (IG story and post templates + Pinterest Pins and New Pinterest Stories)

  • Videography editing

  • Misc. design needs

• QK Website Maintenance

  • Creating new pages

  • Formatting blog posts

  • Brand reveals

  • Updating case studies

• Flodesk emails + newsletters + Segments

• Help with Semi-Custom Brands

• Pinterest and Tailwind scheduling

• Website Checks for QK website clients

*Note: We started small with a few of these tasks and after a year plus of working together we’ve built up to this.

How do you know when you’re ready to hire?

The first step in knowing when you’re ready to hire on is really just coming to peace with the fact that we as entrepreneurs can’t do it all on our own all the time and that it’s OK (and even a good thing) that we need help. This means that we are growing into the position that we envisioned for ourselves and it’s time to hand off tasks that are keeping you away from sitting in your zone of genius and from further growing into that position.

A great way to go about finding someone is word-of-mouth or referrals. This is how I found Brooke. Our mutual friend is also one of Brooke’s clients and when I mentioned that I was looking for someone, she immediately told me about Brooke and how she has helped her in her business.

If you are unable to find what you are looking for via referrals, then one of the best places to find a Virtual Assistant, Virtual Office Manager, or Online Business Manager is in Facebook Groups. You can simply start by searching within the group to see who else has posted looking for help and who responded. Or you can post a job application and see who applies (it is helpful to have very clear expectations laid out, as you will have a lot of interested applicants). It’s a good idea to read through comments in these groups and see who is eager to help, appears knowledgeable, and is really serious about their work. If their FB accounts are public, you can go to their profiles and see if their website URLs are listed. Then you can visit their business websites to get a better feel for who may be a good fit in your business.

Here is a list of good Facebook groups to get started with:

• Successful Female Entrepreneurs (by Maria Wendt)

• Goal Digger Podcast Insiders (by Jenna Kutcher)

• Boss-Moms® (by Boss Mom Dana Malstaff)

• Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs

• Virtual Assistant Savvies

• The Free Mama Movement (by The Free Mama)

• The Rising Tide Society (by Natalie Franke)

• The Female Entrepreneur Community (by Whitney McQuade)

• The Social Bungalow Community (by Shannon Matson)

• Jobs & Careers (sponsored by Dreamers & Doers)

What is the best way to structure working with a VA, VOM, or OBM in a way that works for you and your business?

This really depends on which position you are hiring for. If you are looking for a Virtual Assistant, you will be handing off a lot of the “doing” type tasks. These are step-by-step responsibilities that are really important to your business running successfully and that add up and take a lot of time away from you focusing on what you need to be doing to grow your business.

If you hire a Virtual Office Manager or an Online Business Manager, you will be handing off things like project management, team member management and coordination, client communication and experience, systems management, etc. These positions allow you to worry less about how your team is running because you have someone who is managing what is happening behind the curtain so you can focus on what it is that you want/need to be doing and looking ahead to the big picture.

how do you find someone who can match your aesthetic and design internally when they are technically not a designer?

This is easily the question I get asked most by other designers. I design templates once and then pass them off- that way they are up to my brand standards and stay in line with the look and feel I’m going for. If you can find someone that has a design eye, they should be able to pick things up quickly. For me, it was a big change to no longer design internally for my own business but ultimately it has given me more time to do higher level thinking for my business and spend more time designing for me clients which drives revenue up.

What you need to prep internally with your systems and processes before hiring

Getting all of your workflows out of your head and onto paper was the first step for me. I sat down and wrote out every single step for every service I offer on sticky notes and then put them up on a wall so I could see the flow visually. Then it’s time to decide which steps you really do not need/want to be a part of and outsourcing those things. I started on this process a few months before I started looking for help so I knew what kind of person I was looking for.

systems that qk uses for project management

We use Honeybook as our CRM, Asana internally for project management, and Dropbox for client files. Honeybook has hands down been one of the biggest investments of my time in the past year and it has been SO worth it. We now have templates for every single client email (see below) we send out throughout the design process which saves me hours upon hours of work per week. It’s also where all of our brand strategy questionnaires live and the client can easily fill them out worksheet style online in Honeybook making for a seamless client experience.

Booking clients used to be a PROCESS for me. Sending out and designing a proposal took hours and everything was sent over separately to the client. Now with a few customizations, I’m able to quickly send out beautiful proposals, contracts, and invoices all in one email.

Use this link to try out Honeybook for free and if you love it as much as I do, they’ll give you 20% off your yearly subscription.

the power of workflows and having these created in a project management system

I went from working 10 hour days multiple times per week plus working quite a few weekends and still not having everything done to working 10am-4pm after bringing on help in my business. Having help in my business in an area I don’t excel in has allowed me to focus on what I do best and serve my clients better. It’s also given me peace of mind knowing that I have support internally and has taken a ton of stress off of me since so many parts of my business are now on auto pilot.

client communication/client on-boarding/off-boarding workflows

Below I’m sharing the exact on-boarding and off-boarding workflow Brooke has created for my business. Our goal was to keep me accountable through the off-boarding process (which is where I usually fall off a bit) and to take me off of the tasks I didn’t need to be touching.

You can opt-in here to receive these templates and customize them to work best for your business!

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Queenikathleeni designs is a full-service brand and website design studio for creatives. We specialize in artful design for entrepreneurs offering bespoke branding, print, and web design. Our design process is rooted in strategy as we craft a compelling visual identity to attract your ideal client. We manage branding projects in their entirety, from initial strategy, to visual identity creation and onwards, elevating all brand touch points. Want to work together? Shoot us an inquiry here.